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Lester Young, Charlie Parker, James Moody, Nat "King" History, but It Was Never Really Appealing

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Lester Young, Charlie Parker, James Moody, Nat 64 Chapter Three The Development of the Experimental Band 65 I would go there to play with my cousins, and I began to learn the names it, then talk about it, and you'd write a little paper on it. This was music of these people- Lester Young, Charlie Parker, James Moody, Nat "King" history, but it was never really appealing. It was nice, but it was so much Cole, Miles Davis. They would be playing this music every time I went nicer to be in the band room hearing that live stuff. there, but I didn't know the name of the music; it was just pretty music. I knew all the singers- the popular music, but I was more drawn to this Mitchell characterizes those who went to DuSable during the Dyett era other music because you just listened, and what you heard was inside as "fortunate," but even Englewood, where he went to high school, had its rather than words and rhythms that they would suggest through the advantages. He began playing baritone saxophone in the high-school band, popular forms. and borrowed an alto saxophone from another student. Jazz was not taught at Englewood, but getting to know the precocious saxophonist Donald In the mid-1950s, Mitchell's family moved briefly to Milwaukee, where "Hippmo" Myrick, who later became associated with both Philip Cobran he started high school and began playing the clarinet. His brother Norman and Earth, Wind, and Fire, made up for that lack. "He kind of took me came to live with the family, bringing along a collection of 78 rpm jazz re­ under his wing, because he already knew the stuff," said Mitchell. "He was cordings-"'killers,' they used to call them. Louis Armstrong,].]. Johnson. a fully accomplished musician in high school." Billy Taylor was very popular back then. Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins." The historian Robin D. G. Kelley has raised the possibility that some fu­ As with Jarman, this strange new·music exercised a peculiar power over ture AACM members were radicalized in part by the challenges of military Mitchell. "For me that was a weird time," Mitchell recalled, 'because after life-not only combat, but also the racism that was endemic to service in I started listening to jazz I didn't want to listen to anything else any more. the U.S. armed forces. 38 In 1955, in his junior year in high school, Jarman There was a certain coolness that went along with that-you understood dropped out and joined the army. "I went into the Airborne school, and the jazz, that made you cooler. After a while I went back to include all those Ranger school, because you could make extra money. I made it through other musics I had grown up with." basic training and jump school as number two, because they wouldn't ac­ Entering DuSable High School, Jarman was drawn to Captain Dyett's cept a black as number one." The army was where Jarman started to play band. His parents could not afford to buy him a trumpet, Jarman's preferred the alto saxophone: "I got out of 'the line'-the death zone-by transfer­ instrument, so he joined the band as a snare drummer. 'All you needed ring to the band. The first saxophone I had was a plastic one, like Ornette was a drum pad and drumsticks, which cost about six dollars. The drum I Coleman. The bandmaster gave me thirty days to get my act together or played belonged to the school, and I couldn't take it home." Another future he would kick me back into the line. In that band were a lot of people who AACM member living nearby, James Johnson, played bassoon in the Dyett helped me to get my act together." band. Johnson and Jarman would practice together, eventually developing a Mitchell joined the army in 1958. Army musicians had plenty of time unique daily schooltime lunch ritual: "We would go across the street every to practice and exchange information, and Mitchell met a number of saxo­ day, usually without very much lunch money, maybe fifty cents a day. We phonists, such as Nathaniel Davis, as well as fellow Chicagoans Ruben Coo­ refused to eat in the lunchroom. We would go across the street and put per and Lucious White, Jarman's neighbor as a young person. Mitchell also a nickel apiece in the jukebox. We could hear three songs for a dime. We came into contact with Palmer Jenkins, Sergeant Mitchell, William Romero, would always play this one song by James Moody, 'Last Train from Over­ and Joseph Stevenson, "who was incredible on the saxophone. He was a brook.' We would play that every day." In addition to performance classes, great influence on Anthony [Braxton] when Anthony was in the army." the school's version of music history recalled Abrams's 1940s grammar Mitchell was eventually transferred to Heidelberg, Germany, where he fre­ school experiences: quented local jam sessions at places like the well-known Cave 54, where pia­ nist Karl Berger, trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, saxophonist Bent Jaedig They'd show these films of white operas and white orchestras, like and other European and American musicians met and performed together. Mozart's music- Mozart was real big- Beethoven's music, and Brahms. Hard bop was the coin of that realm, although Ornette Coleman's music That would be a part of our musical education. The teacher would show was beginning to make an impression. During this time, Mitchell met saxo- 66 Chapter Three The Development of the Expe rim enta l Band 67 phonist Albert Ayler, who was in a different army band, stationed in France. eluded Malachi Favors and saxophonists john Powell, Anthony Braxton, After duty hours, Mitchell would go to sessions and listen to Ayler: and Henry Threadgill, as well as Richard Brown, who was playing piano and clarinet, rather than the saxophone for which he became known years I didn't really know what he was doing, but I did know, because I was a later under his adopted name of Ari. Friday afternoons were devoted to re­ saxophonist, that he had an enormous sound on the instrument. They hearsals that brought Wilson students together with the cream of Chicago's would have these sessions, and everybody was, you know, talking about musicians. Present at these events were people like Eddie Harris, Charles him behind his back, but one time they played a blues. Albert played the Stepney, drummers Steve McCall and Jack Dejohnette, bassists Betty Du­ blues about three choruses straight. After that he started stretching, and pree and Jimmy Willis, pianist Andrew Hill, and several musicians who had something went off in my head-"Oh, I see what he's doing now." It been part of the Sun Ra Arkestra, including trumpeter Hobart Dotson and made an impression on me. percussionists Richard Evans and Jim Herndon. In the meantime, Jarman, Favors, Threadgill, pianist Louis Hall, and drummer Richard Smith (now In August 1958, Jarman was discharged. "It was not something I wanted Drahseer Khalid) had formed their own group, playing hard bop. to continue," Jarman said, "because it was very anti-human, this attitude One day in 1963, Roscoe Mitchell turned up at a rehearsal of the Experi­ they were making people into. "39 After a brief visit home to Chicago, he ex­ mental Band at the C&C Lounge, and met Richard Abrams, who had been perienced a kind of odyssey: "I went wandering around the United States. I introduced to the saxophonist by pianist-drummer Jack Dejohnette.4 2 Mala­ went to Arizona. My aunt was there. I stayed there for eight months or so. chi Favors, an early member of the rehearsal band, remarked to Abrams I couldn't talk during this period; I was mute. I went to the Milwaukee In­ how impressed he was by Mitchell's playing. "Muhal kind of took me in," stitute of Psychiatric Research in Wisconsin, as an outpatient, and enrolled Mitchell recalled. Td go to school, and I'd go straight from school to Mu­ in the Milwaukee Institute of Technology. They got me to be able to talk hal's, when he was living in that little place off Cottage Grove, down in the again, and I haven't shut my mouth since."40 basement. I remember he had painted everything that velvet purple color. After his discharge from the army, Mitchell felt that "it was pretty much Sometimes I'd be down over to Muhal's at ten, eleven, twelve at night, play­ set that I was going to be a musician." With the support of his father, who ing or working on music." offered to provide him with a place to stay, he decided to use his GI Bill funds Soon, Mitchell and Favors began rehearsing together and developing to go to Chicago's Woodrow Wilson junior College in 1961, where he met new compositions, often with two other young experimentalists, trum­ Jarman for the first time. "Jarman was already into a contemporary-type peter Fred Berry and drummer Alvin Fielder. Fielder was becoming aware bag when I met him. He was always a little bit out there, all the time." The that "there comes a point where you go from a notion of swinging and two musicians studied with Richard Wang, who was, according to Jarman, keeping a pulse to a notion of time being something different . ... Sun Ra "very adventurous as far as 'jazz' music was concerned, as well as 'classical' had always told me, 'Al, loosen up,' I didn't know what he meant, really." 43 music." According to Wang himself, who has to be credited along with the Looking for something different, Fielder visited New York for nearly a year redoubtable Walter Dyett in any history of the early AACM members, in in 1962, but somehow, the music being played by what he remembered as addition to the standard lessons in theory, counterpoint, and keyboard har­ a "clique" of musicians from Boston, Detroit, and Chicago was not satisfy­ mony, the young musicians were exposed to the music of the Second Vien­ ing his growing urge to find another path.
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